theKompany.com has just released a patch to the well known digital camera application gPhoto2, which allows it to integrate seemlessly with KDE 2. This means you can now access the wide range of supported cameras (over 100 models) from any KDE 2 application. Now I may finally be ready to buy a digital camera! Update: 12/14 10:46 AM. TheKompany.com has posted a screenshot of the KControl module and of Konqueror browsing pictures.

The patch makes gphoto available as a kio_slave, which means that any KDE 2 application which makes use of the kio architecture can (without any modification) access the images stored on a supported camera. For example, you can preview browse the images in Konqueror and even see thumbnails. The patch also adds a new KControl module allowing you to configure the camera.

According to theKompany.com's website, if you have a supported camera, you can start using it with most KDE applications in two easy steps: simply configure your camera model and port type from a list in the KControl module, then start accessing the camera contents with a gphoto:/ URL. It's a bit hard to set up right now -- you need to download the CVS version of gphoto -- but this should be sorted out Real Soon Now(tm). More information on the patch is available at theKompany's website, and you can find a list of supported cameras on the gphoto website.

Comments

This is an excellent example of how the architecture of KDE will accelerate the inclusion of new and diverse technologies, without having to recompile or patch existing applications to take advantage of it.

Patch is the wrong word. We didn't do anything to the libraries, we added the front end to the libraries. Thanks to the fine work of the gPhoto folks, the new gPhoto2 makes this very easy. Keep in mind that gPhoto2 is still not production release and we have no control over that, but at least it's available and we have been having good luck with it internally.

We picked up on it from that thread and had some very positive conversation with the gPhoto crew at the time. They have really done a great job on these libraries. What was a bit disappointing was when we decided to start on this about a month ago we tried talking to them again and every single email to every single person has gone unanswered in all that time. It's a testament to the quality of their code that we were able to find everything and pull this off as quickly as we did.

Well I just saw some of the latest screenshots from our engineers yesterday and Aethera is looking very good. I would say 2 weeks is a safe bet at this point. We have some UI things to resolve, but overall I'm very happy with how it's coming along.

One of the main things we wanted to do in designing gPhoto2 was to allow people to use it in different environments are architectures. It is great to see that people are taking advantage of it, especially under KDE2 since that is what I'm running ;)

Many thanks to Shawn Gordon and the Kompany for putting the time and effort into making it work. This is something else exciting to celebrate at the local Reno LUG christmas party!

Guys, get Krayon working well, and I'll have my Dad converted to Linux + KDE2 in no time !!!

He needs tools to create HTML-Files =>Quantato get images from his digital camera => gphoto2and to edit these images. Well, he sure could do the latter with GIMP, but, seriously, the GIMP UI isn't the most intuitive one, at least for longtime WIN-Users.

I just installed this on a kde-2.0.1 FreeBSD desktop. It went in smoothly and I can get a basic file view of the files on the camera. However, downloading any of the images doesn't work. The downloading dialog box just sits at 0%. If I kill it and then try another, I get one of those "the process implementing the protocol died" messages pop up.

The command line gphoto2 utility reads the images quite well from my PowerShot S100 usb camera...

The proper place to ask is gphoto@thekompany.com. The Engineer is gone for a few days right now. We will be releasing the code to KDE CVS as soon as everything is set up. The project will be renamed kio_kamera at that time.

I've played with this a bit tonight with a Canon digital ixus and it needs more polish yet. On the other hand it could be gphoto, as I can download files with the gphoto command line but nothing can read the jpgs produced.

The kamera page mentions that gphoto needs a patch applied but its not in the sources as, the latest CVS of Gphoto2 has the lib update applied.

Where can I get Kamera? According to TheKompany.com, it _should_ be a part of KDE 2.2.2. I have KDE 2.2.2-1 on RedHat 7.2. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place? Again, according to TheKompany.com, it should be in Control Center -> Peripherals. I only have mouse and keyboard. Am I missing a step?